BLACK ARTS MOVEMENT: EXAMINED PART VII—THEN AND NOW CONFERENCE DAY 2
Friday, May 19, 2023
10:00 AM 9:00 PM
Harlem Stage @ 150 Convent Avenue, New York
12 – 1:30PM EST
Music & Struggle with Toshi Reagon & Nona Hendryx
Revolutionary activist and iconic art-rock, new-wave goddess Nona Hendryx (Joe’s Pub Vanguard Award recipient, GRAMMY/Emmy-nominated vocalist, record producer, songwriter, musician, author, and Ambassador of Artistry in Music for Berkelee College of Music) joins award-winning singer/songwriter/composer/activist Toshi Reagon (Alpert Award Fellow 2022), to discuss the radical power of music in the lives and work of Black women and music's contribution to the Black Arts Movement from a feminist perspective.
Tackling social issues, love, and politics, these groundbreaking musicians discuss how music influenced their lives and helped them address urgent social issues as well as helped shape their collective modes of political Black consciousness, artistic production, and feminism. From blues, jazz, soul, funk, and R&B to hard rock, new wave, and new age music, they take a critical look at how Black women have historically negotiated intersectionality, feminism, activism, and critical thinking as well as maintained agency against male dominant power structures (including that of the Black Arts Movement), in order to contribute a socially conscious womanist perspective to its to long-lasting legacy.
ABOUT THE CONFERENCE
Inspired, imagined, and curated by Harlem Stage Associate Artistic Director/Artist-in-Residence, Carl Hancock Rux, the Black Arts Movement Conference is a three-day event featuring a keynote address by poet, music critic, and arts administrator A.B. Spellman. The conference includes panels, discussions, essays, and performances, featuring pioneers and visionary artists including Nona Hendryx, Sonia Sanchez, Henry Threadgill, Stew, Toshi Reagon, and more, as well as a closing-night concert co-presented with Park Avenue Armory, curated by Carl Hancock Rux, Tavia Nyong’o, and Vernon Reid, with contributions by Carrie Mae Weems.
Employing roundtables, public dialogues, and screenings, the convening will explore controversial areas of tension between the intellectual, ethical, and commercial imperatives of the Black Arts Movement. In conversations between pioneers of the Black Arts Movement and a contemporary generation of artists and scholars, the Black Arts Movement Conference centers itself within a dialogue that is both historically and culturally relevant in our ever-changing world. TICKETS & INFO